FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

China’s Space Station Is Designed To Support Scientific Experiments

April 26, 2018 (EIRNS)—As part of the China’s national Space Day celebrations today, Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s manned space program, disclosed more details of the space station that China will have operational in 2022. The core module will be put into orbit unmanned, and about four manned missions will be carried out to assemble the station. Two laboratories, Wentian, or “Quest for the Heavens,” and Mengtian, or “Dreaming of the Heavens,” will accommodate more than 10 tons of equipment for scientific experiments, Zhou said. There will be 26 cabinets, or lockers, for experiments, and 67 hatches to dock medium-sized external experiment payloads.

A space telescope with a viewing angle 200 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope will orbit near the station, and dock with it for maintenance or refueling. Zhou also announced that the station will be open to commercial activities, to help foster China’s space economy.

China Daily writes that “In 2024, it is likely [the Chinese station] will become the world’s only space station if the U.S.-led International Space Station is retired that year as planned.”